AFTER the peace talks with the communist rebels spiralled out of control last year with skirmishes between the New People’s Army and the government troops raising the casualty figures, even as negotiators from both sides endeavored to come into substantive agreements in in formal talks in Norway, the two sides in recent weeks worked hard to ensure that there would be no repeat of the unfortunate events the last time.
Last July 19, 2017, Duterte’s own Presidential Security Group while travelling in North Cotabato was ambushed by rebels. Without any interim ceasefire agreement, Duterte complained, there was no enabling environment for the talks to continue and scuttled the talks altogether soon after. The National Democratic Front (NDFP), on the other hand, scored the government for allowing the forward movement of their troops into rebel territory and reasoned that they are left with no choice but to take tactical offensives to defend their communities.
The needless wasting of human lives from both sides as their principals talk in the negotiating table in a bid to jointly address the supposed root causes of the armed conflict was a thorny issue that was difficult to resolve. The NDFP is a revolutionary organization, after all, whose members believe that the only way for their highest aspirations for the Filipino masses to be achieved is only through armed struggle. Laying down their arms even before substantive agreements are arrived at with the government is tantamount to surrender according to their logic, a violation of their most cherished principles for which scores of their martyrs have died for, and thus justify their stance during peace negotiations with government of seriously talking while fighting.
In recent months, curiously, Duterte once again offered the olive branch but reiterated his demand for the guns to fall silent in what he calls as a last chance for peace. This time, the NDFP, acquiesced and agreed to a Stand Down Agreement with government a week before the formal resumption of official talks and the declaration of Coordinated Unilateral Ceasefires from both camps that is supposed to take place in the fourth week of June 2018.
It was a promising development that would make the guns fall silent as substantive negotiations on two major points of the Comprehensive Agreement of Socio-economic Reforms or CASER are undertaken that address the issues of agrarian reform and national industrialization. The Stand Down Agreement and then later the Coordinated Unilateral Ceasefires are important confidence building-measures that would, for a moment, allow the two camps to set aside the decades of animosity between the armed warring groups and engage in meaningful conversations about the whys of they have been at war in the first place through the negotiations.
In exchange, government is to release political prisoners with the concurrence of Congress as well as NDFP consultants who will participate in the talks. All these agreements were signed by the GRP and NDFP panel last June 9, 2018 after a series of back channel talks brokered by the Norwegian government as third party facilitator. Everything was kept under wraps until what is supposed to be the formal announcement of the Stand Down Agreement and Coordinated Ceasefires right before the resumption of formal talks in the third week of June 2019.
But Duterte, upon listening to his generals in a military command conference last June 13, 2018, postponed the peace negotiations anew with the meaningful but cryptic statement that he “is not ready for that” or all the agreements that his panel entered into.
It is back again to the drawing board with confusing pronouncements coming from government and the president that they prefer the talks be held here in the country without a third party facilitator or that Joma Sison should just come home, trivializing the efforts of both negotiating panels as well as dashing the hopes of peace advocates for a political settlement for the bitter 50-year war between Filipinos.
It is a sad development that can only make sense from a very cynical point of view. The generals are hell bent on scoring a military victory in areas known to be largely held by communist rebels and these can be ascertained by the ongoing massive military operations and forward deployment in Leyte, Bohol, and Mindanao. The cessation of hostilities that their principal requested will only thwart their efforts to “secure” these places and thus the demand for the new postponement in the peace process.
The primary lesson of the decades of war remains lost to Duterte and military men. There can be no absolute military victory in actions that create orphans and widows out of an oppressed people struggling for liberation. The strongest argument for a negotiated settlement to deep-seated historical conflict is to end the cycle of violence by addressing its root causes. To paraphrase the Zapatista’s cry, government may opt to continue to bomb their communities to smithereens, and weaken them in relentless attacks, not realizing that the people that they are burying into submission are actually the very seeds of an inexhaustible and proud resistance.